CAPTURE CO2 FROM POWER PLANTS

by Masse Bloomfield

My suggestion about reducing CO2 emissions from coal fired electric power plants is to use algae as the clean up mechanism for CO2 pollution from smokestack gases. Some of the research for these algae ideas has already been done.

I had read about the companies trying to use algae to exploit smokestack
CO2 gas to convert that gas into biofuels. You can go to www.peswiki.com and find companies trying to do that. One of the companies is GreenFuel Technologies.Greenfuel tried their pilot plant at the Arizona Public Service Redhawk Power Plant at Tonopah, Arizona. I believe this experiment failed because of predatory algae. The algae I propose can handle invasive algae.

I also like the idea of using ion exchange resins to remove mercury and sulfur from smokestack gases. Perhaps a heat exchanger in the smokestack gas flow could be used to salvage some energy.

GreenFuel Technologies had problems with predator algae. I think it is possible to counteract that problem with a two stage bio-reactor. The first stage could be algae that attached to the walls of the reactor such as those that have been used in cleaning up fish pond pollution.Those attaching algae could then be killed and used as feed for other algae that produce biofuels and/or food and/or medicines.

I can see no real impedance to finding the right combination of algae. When this happens, then making the clean up of the CO2 producing power plants, mandatory. It should not take a lot of money to do the research, perhaps a few million dollars. And GreenFuel has done a lot of the ground work. Also you might contact OriginOil for its ability to prepare the algae for further processing.

The firm that has developed a system for the attaching algae is Hyrodmentia, 3303 SW 33rd Road, Ocala, FL 34478.(Tel. No. (352) 237-6145). I’m not sure how much research they are doing. Also if you go to Google and put in the search statements ["walter mulbry" + algal turf] or ["algal turf scrubber" + adey], you will learn what has happened recently. Walter Mulbry has run an experiment taking liquid sewage from a pig farm and running it through the algal trays.His results show that the system cleans up the pig sewage very well.

You may want to talk to Dr. Adey who developed the use of attaching algae to find out what he thinks about converting smokestack CO2 to algae. I think that the key person to do the research to determine which attaching algae to use, is Dr. Walter Adey at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.